No Humor in His Tone
by flecksofpoppy
Summary: My first het!fic in years! A short ficlet about Tifa and her reflections on a disappointing present spent in Reno's arms. Reno/Tifa.


A/N: I requested a "death round" fic prompt last night while talking to alifestylechoice, because I felt like writing, but I wanted a completely random pairing to remove me my the CRAZY HEAD SPACE THAT IS THIS RUFUS/TSENG FIC I'm working on. So, the prompt I got was "no humor in his tone," and the pairing was Tifa/Reno.

I haven't written het!fic in uh...like...a decade at best? Sheesh. But Tifa is one of my favorite characters, and stepping back into Tifa-land for a moment was kinda cool. I think I'll probably write more, and I hope this isn't wildly OOC.

A bit of a shorter ficlet, pretty much set after Advent Children. Cloud gets over his teen angst, but...I cannot help but wonder if a real relationship would ever manifest between him and Tifa. To me, back in the day when I played the game, I was a Tifa/Cloud fan all the way. I think Tifa is in love with Cloud, but Cloud is...Cloud. So whether or not that would actually ever go down is left up to speculation. I think the Reno/Tifa pairing premise is way more viable in AC as well, since they're actually around each other quite a bit, and their lives intertwine. So there you go. God, this intro is going to be longer than the damn fic. I finished it, so I thought I'd throw it up here.

Oh yes, and also: this was supposed to be PRONZ. Uh...it didn't quite turn out that way. O_O

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**No Humor in His Tone**

When he smiled, it reminded Tifa of the plate dropping. It was something about his teeth, the way that they arced, that reminded her of the past. Strangely, he seemed somehow younger now, than he had been back then, back when Shinra was still in power and she was little more than a bug steeped in the shadow of the sector plate.

Now _his _side was as broken as her former comrades still were, bodies probably rotting and boning out into skeletal flowers and fossils, never knowing what had befallen the rest of the world after their unfair deaths.

There was something feral and alive in this bastard that she craved. She resented that it had to be housed within him, _him_ of all people, but there it was.

It was as if Reno had been unaffected by all of the events surrounding them. Even Rude, the quieter one had looked repentant, even Rufus Shinra had met his limits, everything and everyone had been destroyed that she had known before Meteor and the collapse of Midgar, a home that never was one, and now she was stuck back where she had been at first, without a plan.

After they had "saved the world," as the story went (she often wasn't included-it was mostly Cloud's presence that was described), everything had seemingly changed. Hope, even amidst the Geostigma, pervaded the city of Edge.

Strife's Delivery Service. It had been her idea; Cloud was never one for thinking new things up and pursuing them, but she didn't begrudge him for it. She didn't want anything from him. Not anything she thought was hard to give, but she found out soon enough that not much had changed.

_I think she wants you to get over it, man. _

_Yeah Reno_, she had later agreed. The plain-talking bastard who had killed everyone she loved. Unchanged, flustered as his stoic partner tried to force him out of the room as she and Cloud talked and stayed sessile even then.

Reno tasted like the past. He tasted like cigarettes and her and he'd lie in the sheets and stare at her with a _look_ on his face that she didn't appreciate. Because this was all about forgetting, forgetting the disappointing _that one time _and the _almost, just then..._

She'd wrap herself up inside of the blanket, in her bed, shut the door and lock it and avoid his gaze, even though sometimes he asked questions about her. She never answered, just told him in her own way what she wanted from him, and it felt good sometimes. The past hovered like a cloud, and Tifa found herself welcoming its shade. The present, after the battle, after the death and the pain and the loss, was not what hope had promised.

Cloud had knocked on the door once, and she had scurried away from Reno's embrace like a mouse afraid of a strike. He had just looked at her with an expression crossed between surprise and pity, and she had struck him in the arm. He flinched. He didn't say anything, not even when she called out, _I'm busy_. Then he had grabbed her hair and forced her back and run his hand over her breasts, more gently than she would have imagined, and she wanted it hard because otherwise it was wrong.

When she forced his head downward and grabbed his hair, way too soft for someone so hardened, it burned her hand in a red mass of fire, and he just acquiesced. She wanted to feel something painful, something that smoldered, something that made her forget the world as it was right then. Everything in it, everything.

"Honey," he had said once, naked, blowing the smoke of a cigarette out of his nose even in the midst of her protests, "come here." And for the first time, he grabbed her in a strong grip, ignored her push and shove away, and just clutched at her waist, grabbed her hips and shuffled her body against his.

"This is what it's about," he had said, flicked the cigarette out of the open window. His arms around her, his hand in her hair, impersonal but enjoyable. "Just don't think. Just kiss me." So she had, and he had kissed her.

"Don't you have someone?" she had asked once. And he hadn't said a word, the first time, the only time, and she didn't ask again.

When they arched together, it was easy to forget the present. In the sunlight, when she closed her eyes and imagined another time and place, it was easy to forget the present. But even then, she didn't know what she was wishing for anymore.

Reno always left his electromag rod at the door when he came to her.

"Aren't you afraid I might try to kill you?" she had asked. "After everything?"

He had smirked, no humor in his tone, as he replied, "You don't have the heart."

When she had cried, he hadn't held her, and for that she was grateful.


End file.
